A Hat in Time, a 3D platformer coming October 5

It seems to me that a lot of gamers are not aware of the upcoming release of A Hat in Time, a 3D platformer from a new studio Gears for Breakfast that first made its appearance on Kickstarter in 2013.

After reading that sentence, you probably thought of another 3D platformer that came out earlier this year: Yooka-Laylee. Having reviewed the game, I can say that I personally enjoyed it, but a fair amount of players were justifiably disappointed by its lack of polish, charisma, and other flaws. However, A Hat in Time was announced roughly two years earlier than Yooka-Laylee and met a successful Kickstarter fund of $296,360, significantly more than the initial $30,000 goal. Originally, Gears for Breakfast was a team of one man named Jonas Kærlev, but soon branched out with other team members across four different countries.

A Hat in Time tells the story of a girl named Hat Kid, who is capable of interstellar time travel. After being attacked by a member of The Mafia, she loses her time pieces that become scattered all over the world. Now she must travel the world to collect all the time pieces before the evil Mustache Girl steals them all.

Lead developer Jonas Kærlev came up with the idea of the game as a result of there being a lack of 3D collect-a-thon platformers on the market, naming games like Super Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie as references. He also doesn’t want there to be an overabundance of collectibles like in Donkey Kong 64. As you might notice from the trailer, there is very clear inspiration taken from those games, with a charming cel-shaded artstyle often compared to The Wind Waker. Even famous Rare composer Grant Kirkhope is one of the composers!

After four years of development time and testing, A Hat in Time finally launches on Mac, PC, Xbox One, and PS4 on October 5, 2017! I remember just graduating high school by the time this game popped up on Kickstarter and it still hasn’t hit me that I’ll be able to play it in exactly one month. I wish Gears for Breakfast a successful launch and that this piece I’ve written makes more people aware of its existence!